But
consumers won’t lose in this, despite the complainers’ gripe that putting solar
panels on new housing will add about $9,500 to the cost of each new home. The
Energy Commission calculates that while its rule will add about $40 to the
average monthly payment on new housing, it will also save an average $80 a
month in electric bills, for a net gain of $40 a month to the new homeowners.

And
their actual gain might be far greater. For most new housing in California
these days is built inland, far from the coastal strip where weather is
coolest. Because air conditioners often run steadily there at least six months
of every year, power use for basic household functions is much higher inland
than along the coast.

Add
to this the steady increases in electric rates perpetually demanded by
utilities and the usual aquiescence of the state Public Utilities Commission in
granting them, and the benefits of solar figure to get higher each year. For
solar power will cost the new home buyers very little beyond the original
expense and they won’t have to worry about price increases that will afflict
other homeowners.

This
does not mean the solar mandate is perfection. Immaculate has rarely been a
word to describe the Energy Commission, whose dealings on hydrogen refueling
stations, for just one example, have been rife with conflicts of interest.

So
yes, the new rule benefits builders and solar panel suppliers, adding to their
profits. It also helps labor unions, whose members will get added work.

But
the new mandate will not aid only the new home buyers, who will likely have to
meet slightly higher standards to get mortgages. It will also benefit all
consumers. Here’s how:

Putting
solar photovoltaic panels atop as many as 80,000 new roofs each year (the
approximate average number of new homes built in California in each of the last
five years) will eliminate the need for the equivalent of one new solar thermal
farm in the California desert each year. Costs of those facilities are usually
borne by private companies, who recoup their investment by selling power to the
big utilities.

The
utilities often then build hundreds of miles of transmission lines to fetch
power from those solar farms in desert areas, adding billions of dollars yearly
to their rate base. All customers foot the bills for that, while the utilities
get a guaranteed profit on this use of consumer money, usually about 14 percent
yearly for 20 years.

Solar
thermal plants, then, are a bad deal for everyone but the companies that own
them and the utilities that exploit them. Anything that eliminates need for
those plants is good for every consumer in the state.

All
that is entirely aside from the environmental benefits of adding large amounts
of solar power annually to the state’s supplies, thus helping meet California’s
2030 goal of getting 40 percent of its energy from renewable sources like
hydro-power, geothermal, wind – and solar.

And
yet, there remains the problem of home prices. California’s median price of
about half-a-million dollars for an ordinary house has driven away more than
500,000 low-income families over the last 11 years, says a study commissioned
by the Next 10 public policy non-profit group.

To
mitigate the added cost solar will bring at mortgage-application time, what’s
needed is a sliding-scale state solar subsidy based on income. (The new rule
already includes subsidies for adding battery storage to solar systems on new
homes.) This should be built into home-purchase paperwork, with the money going
directly to sellers and thus cutting some of the added $40 in mortgage
payments.

This
is about all that needs to be added for this mandate to become one of the best
public policy decisions California has seen in decades.

-30- Email Thomas Elias at
tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising
Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now
available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net

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About Me

Thomas Elias writes the syndicated California Focus column, appearing twice weekly in 88 newspapers around California, with circulation over 2.2 million.
He has won numerous awards from organizations like the National Headliners Club, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the Los Angeles Press Club, and the California Taxpayers Association. He has been nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize in distinguished commentary.
Elias is the author of two books, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It" (now in its third edition; also published in Japanese and recently optioned for a television movie) and "The Simpson Trial in Black and White," co-authored with the late Dennis Schatzman.